Adapting
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "The resemblance had been staggering the first time Petyr saw her." Sansa is unexpected, but Petyr Baelish has always been excellent at adapting.
1. Watching

The resemblance had been staggering the first time he saw her. For the space of a breath he was a boy again, the weight of the years and the burden of mistakes gone, Catelyn smiling at him before it had all gone wrong. Then he had blinked, and the eyes were different, and the lines of her face were subtly wrong, and then he was introducing himself to Sansa Stark as easily as if he hadn't been momentarily crippled by memories. She had smiled the vague smile of politeness and turned on to curtsy to someone else and mouth the lies someone else had put on her tongue, and the possibilities rose up before him too fast to absorb. She was like redemption, forgiveness and a second chance if only he could reach her, but even while his blood warmed with illicit desire his mind saw the rich potential of her pretty face and lying lips.

He had scoped her out as subtly as he could, which was to say by the time he was done he knew even the details of her gowns better than she did herself and even her loving, too-trusting father had no idea of his interest. Joffrey was a bad choice, a terrible match for her, a brutish bully too stupid to follow instructions he did not understand. At least he proved manageable, with the right persuasion, while Sansa survived with a silent tenacity and unconscious knack for social maneuvering that surprised him not at all. Her youth, her innocence, her foolishness, were just details, accessories to the larger piece that was more clever than she showed even to herself and harder at the core than anyone but he gave her credit for. A Stark in truth, although he hadn't seen it at first, too blinded by the past to properly see. She was not Catelyn. But then he wasn't Petyr either, not as he had been; he was richer, wiser, older. The girl who looked so like Cat was younger, prettier, and much, much better at lying. She hadn't gotten that from her sternly truthful father or the calm honesty of her mother. Petyr sometimes liked to imagine that it was his influence, bleeding over from another life where he was her father and Cat her mother. But the fantasy could never last very long, and more and more often he found Sansa's name breathing past his lips rather than Cat's.

It was a strange turn of events, to have the focus of his life shift out from under him, but Petyr Baelish was nothing if not adaptable.


	2. Schemes

It had been foolish, he knew that. Stealing her away was an impulse that had proven impossible to set aside, and impulses were dangerous things. He had survived so long, done so well, by keeping his distance. It was easy to stay cold and removed when his heart wasn't involved. He had thought it was lost forever, that all his emotion had bled out when he lost Cat, and so he made himself a life based on logic and manipulation and mild hedonistic amusement. Caring made people impetuous, and that was dangerous. But he hadn't been prepared to deal with Sansa. Once the impulse had sunk itself in him, the only thing to do was to logic his way through. Even then, he had been sure it would backfire, slip out from under him, but even giving in to this uncharacteristic weakness he was clever enough to stay ahead of his enemies, which was to say everyone.

He made up for it once he got her to the Eyrie. Marrying Lysa Arryn was distasteful, courting her a hundred times more so, but after that one jolt his feelings proved entirely manageable for the sake of his long-term goals. He was relieved that the girl hadn't put him so far out of himself, Cat's daughter or no. He could have stalled indefinitely, acting as Lord of the Eyrie in Robin's stead, securing his hold in the light of Lysa's mad adoration for him and the shadow of Robin's obvious incompetence for the position. But he disliked the necessary pretense that Lysa had the power to confer or revoke titles or power to him; that rankled in a way that soothing her ego never did, and the Eyrie offered precious little in the way of political machinations to amuse him.

So he invented one of his own. It was a delicate maneuver, but it wasn't particularly difficult once he worked out the details. Even in the moment when his mouth pressed over the warmth of Sansa's unresisting lips and the snowflakes caught between them evaporated against their heat, his mind was calculating ahead, through Lysa's explosion, Sansa's terrified response, the scapegoat singer, and freedom.

Without Lysa, he could stretch out into his role, invent details that no one would question, play with the perceptions and assumptions of those around him. He could scrape away the calcified fear that froze Sansa's mind, teach her words she repeated before she fully understood their import, and watch the edges of her mind unfurl into that same understanding. It was better than thinking. It was better than touching. It was better than Cat.

It was better than winning.


End file.
